Implementing Internet Remost Logic on a Personal Computer

Abstract

This thesis demonstrates that a desktop personal computer can support an efficient internet remote login implementation with the same protocols used by large mainframes. It describes a project in which the Telnet remote login protocol, along with the supporting Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol were implemented on an IBM Personal Computer. The utility of the implementation depended heavily on the software speed. Strategies discusses to insure quick performance included tailoring protocols to their clients needs, sharing the overhead of asynchronous actions, and sharing data. A natural order in which to process the protocol data was identified, and two control structures were presented that allowed the protocol modules to run in this order. One of the control structures used procedures and processes, while the other used procedures alone. A full scale protocol was successfully placed in the personal computer. With some foreign hosts, the implementation echoed characters in less than a quarter of a second, and processed a screenful of data in less than three seconds. The protocol software overhead was never the dominating performance bottleneck. The serial line interface limited the character echoing performance while the speed with which the processor could operate its display limited the processing speed of large amounts of data. Memory size was not a significant constraint.